Member

5/10. No amazing matches (closest was AJ/Nak), and the booking of the MitB match winners was just awful. Alexa should be nowhere near the tile and Braun doesn't need the briefcase to challenge for the title. Bleh that PPV left a bad taste in my mouth

Member

Bryan vs. Cass felt weird since the crowd was quiet every time Bryan wasn't going on the offensive. Cass remained bland, though I appreciate the new moves he used. I don't get the point in this rematch seeing how it was booked the exact same as the last one with a clean, decisive submission victory for Bryan. Cass looks like he should go back to NXT to improve; he looks really green in the ring.

Owens and New Day's backstage segment was funny. "IHOB was right" is by far the greatest line of dialogue any heel has ever spouted.

I marvel every time I see Lashley. The dude looks like he was chiseled from stone. Seriously, the dude is probably the best built man in the company. Just pure muscle without looking like a 'roider. As for the actual match...eh. Bland squash, which WWE really forced itself into whenever it started feeding Zayn lines questioning Lashley's military service. You can't say shit like that and not get squashed at the end of the feud. The people that chanted for Zayn despite that felt very strange and got on my nerves to an extent. This match could've been a lot better if it was more even. Giving Lashley a triumphant first singles match in years on PPV win matters more than putting on an exciting match, I suppose.

Elias' lariat to Rollins on the apron looked B R U T A L. Fantastic spot. The commentators making excuses for Rollins cheating to win is brutal in a different way. I don't like such blatant double standards just 'cause someone's a babyface. From Graves it makes sense, but the other two? C'mon, not one person disagrees with it?

The best part of the women's MITB match was when a white person named Lynch got doubled team by two black people. Yes, I am immature. No, I couldn't help but laugh whenever it happened. One of the commentators said Ember refers to herself as "the War Goddess", which irritates me. She should've kept her indy name - Athena - if they're just going to call her a war goddess anyways. Athena is a much better name than the emo anime anti-hero name they gave her. Oh, and that ending? Total bullshit. There is zero excuse for Becky not to have won that briefcase. She stood there with more than enough time to pull it down, but instead of doing that she freezes and starts to play an invisible piano or something. Did she suddenly get Vietnam flashbacks? Maybe touching the briefcase triggered her memories of Khe Sanh.

At this point I stopped taking notes in my phone since I stopped taking the show seriously. This is like one of those movies where the acting is fine, the dialogue is fine, but the CGI is so atrocious it kills the ability of the viewer to suspend disbelief. From here on out I'm looking back on the matches rather than reciting what I wrote to myself when actually watching the show.

Well...kinda watching the show. I skipped all of Mahal vs. Reigns, all of Styles vs. Nakamura XXVI, and everything but the end of Asuka vs. Carmella. The fact that WWE actually brought Ellsworth back to screw Asuka made me laugh, groan, and ultimately curse Redboy123 for being such a prophet. I will admit, though, that it was kinda neat to have someone steal Asuka's entrance gear and appear as an apparition instead of Ellsworth just showing up as himself from the get-go. It's just a shame they used that here instead of in an actually decent storyline. Carmella feels way too cringeworthy.

Ronda vs. Nia was decent. Ronda looked lost at times and the armbar attempts were a bit too frequent for my liking. She could use much more practice. Alexa cashing in to become champion is painful, though I suppose the question to be asked is whether it is more or less painful than waiting a few months before seeing the cash in. I've stated before that I was cheering on Becky, so it goes without saying that I didn't like the decision to give the briefcase to Alexa. I'm not interested in seeing her holding the title anymore. It feels like Alexa's been champion since the dawn of time. At the very least it wasn't Natalya doing this, which makes me happy since Natalya is less entertaining in the ring than Alexa.

The men's MITB match was good. Spots were nice, Miz losing sucks. Strowman having the case was pretty interesting at first, but not so much after remembering that Lesnar appears on RAW about as frequently as the Undertaker does. The opportunities to tease cash ins aren't going to be frequent, which is lame seeing how that's one of the things that makes the briefcase so fun. Definitely should've gone to a Smackdown wrestler. Anyways, I'd like him to take the contract out of the briefcase and just stuff it in his pocket since he'd look like a goofball running around with the case. Miz' facial expressions and Strowman murdering Owens are the highlights of the match.

I'm not giving a numerical rating to this show since I honestly don't know how I feel about it. I'll some up my views towards this show with one word: eh.

I got 8/10 matches right, so that's an 80% chance of correctly guessing outcomes for this PPV. I foresaw the DQ finish for Ronda's match, but not the Ellsworth interference in the Carmella match. The ladder matches are the ones that I was off on the most. I really didn't think Strowman would win since the visual of him with the briefcase seemed so comical. I think I'm going to start documenting my predictions from here on out to see how well I guess match outcomes on average.

Member

You should have really given the AJ/Nak match a chance. I know you don't like Shinsuke, but doesn't AJ being the other person in the ring make up for that somewhat? You missed a great nut shot by AJ onto Nak.

Legend

It's weird, Alexa winning twice, my favorite division essentially being that on, MitB being wasted on Braun, and the lack of new stories and story bits..... Theoretically I should hate this show, I should hate the wasted potential and complain, but I really don't care. It doesn't matter how much is said and how much I think certain aspects should change, because I have been beaten down by years of apathy by this point.

Legend

Would have given this 2/10 for Alexa winning and cashing in as well as Asuka losing to Thot because of No Chin, but I enjoyed Seth vs Elias and Shin vs AJ was decent enough to give this a 4/10, doesn't matter though WWE broke me, and now I shall move on from them.

Member

not a bad watch imo. I watched it with a friend of mine and we actually had a great time. Once I get on any forum tho, it's all negative lol.

the only real issue I had with the PPV was the Bliss thing. Before going into the ladder match I had Sasha, Becky or Ember penciled in as potential winners but in the midst of the match it kinda hit me that Bliss has nothing to do right now and totally fits the MITB "chicken-shit heel" criteria, so when she unhooked the briefcase I wasn't even shocked, nor was I mad that she won it. The thing I wasn't too keen on was the cash in itself. Even though people seem to react to her really well, it's always the same with her and it just doesn't feel like anything has changed, which is a shame because the MITB stip is a perfect tool for change. She literally just held the title 2 months ago, the only real difference I see here are slightly bigger boobs but other than that, they basically just erased those 2 months and now they're right back where they were before Mania. Which kinda made this whole ladder match a waste to begin with, despite it being way better than their first 2 womens ladder matches from last year because this year they actually took some risks and used the ladders lol.
It's also painful to think of how easy it would have been to freshen things up by just replacing Bliss with someone like Sasha or even Natalya and have them turn heel during the Nia/Rousey match by attacking them like Alexa did. My friend and I were really pulling for Sasha to finally catch a big win and turn heel again but now they just re-established that Bliss can't lose and that's about it really

Member

Didn't watch much of this because I'm not willing to spend four hours on something I'm barely invested in. I was planning on watching the Money in the Bank ladder match but I work Sunday Nights and was immediately spoiled on the results of that when logging on to social media, so I pretty much shrugged off watching those. I'm sure they were fine matches, most Money in the Bank matches I've seen has been a good time, but I couldn't muster up any interest in spending like forty minutes watching two matches when I knew the outcome, especially since I didn't like either outcome. So I'm just going to ramble about what I did see.

Watched Bryan vs. Cass because I like Daniel Bryan and it kicked-off the show so I was still in a good mood (foreshadowing) so I decided what the hell and watched it. I'm pretty happy with that decision as this was fairly good match. Admittedly it was totally lifeless whenever Cass was in charge, and I don't really blame the crowd for only making noise when Bryan was in control. A lot of Cass' offense in this match was simply punching Bryan, waiting, and then punching Bryan again. Very slow, and boring, and he only did crowd work during the pause between punches once throughout bout. Still, I ended up enjoying this match because Bryan kept the pace up well, the Big Boot from Cass was a very convincing false finish, and I thought it was clever how the match constantly (i.e. they did it twice) punished Big Cass for his limited offense. He essentially lost the match because his went for that Torture Rack slam a second time, and I like that. I also really like that Daniel Bryan won. At the time I was worried this feud would carry over until Extreme Rules so I figured thought they might've had Cass get his win back but nope, Bryan beats him clean as a whistle twice and then they fire him. I am not upset with that at all.

Next match I watched was Asuka vs. Carmella. Ugh. Saying I "Hated it" wouldn't be entirely accurate since I've lost too much passion for WWE/Wrestling/Life to get legitimately heated over a stupid finish but I did almost shut off my feed and I'm pretty much at the point where yeah, I'm kinda over WWE. I'm sure I'll check up on SummerSlam, and part of me wants to watch Styles vs. Rusev but I'm kinda washing my hands after this. And it's not because Asuka lost, waaa! mah gurl didn't win. I'd be upset that she'd lose but if it was handled differently I'm a rational enough person to not criticize it simply for not catering to my desires. But their attempt at a dirty finish was to simply have Asuka stare at Ellsworth for like two minutes straight. And man, it made her look so stupid. But no, she didn't just look stupid for staring at Ellsworth because they had Carmella roll her up, Asuka kicked out, beat Carmella up real quickly then immediately went back to staring at Ellsworth. Like, presumably they had her kick out to keep her looking strong, like she's no Baron Corbin a roll-up's not enough to take her down but instead it just makes her look like an idiot. The only way she could've look stupider is if they had her going "duuuuuuuhhhh" and start drooling, though at least then I'd be mildly aroused (by the drooling only mind you, I don't know why I want to clarify that) She clearly could've beaten Carmella but instead was too mesmerized by a cosplay.

Hell, she could've easily went for a pin and just kept her eyes locked in on Ellsworth. Have Asuka do that, and during the count Ellsworth begins to enter the ring, Asuka breaks the fall and knocks Ellsworth down. When Asuka turns around, Carmella hits her Superkick and pins Asuka then after the match you can reveal it was Ellsworth in the cosplay. If they did it that way I wouldn't have much to complain about concerning the finisher, that would've significantly diminished how stupid she looked, and it would've made it feel like Ellsworth had an active role in costing her the match, rather than a passive one of just standing there in a mask and robe. But instead we just got a finish that made Asuka look brain-dead. And unfortunately, the match itself was bad too. There were some good moments, mostly courtesy of Asuka but credit where credit's due, Carmella's suicide dive was nice and a good way of conveying how big of a threat Asuka is to her. Suicide Dive's are a dime a dozen in WWE, pretty much everyone does one but Carmella typically doesn't, she didn't against Charlotte, her moveset is usually just a bunch of rest-holds so relative to her it was a big move to pull out and I appreciate that. Besides that, Carmella's offense was mostly boring, and there was a lot of it. The match was too competitive, doesn't the story of the dirty finish work better if the match is built towards it? Outside of her freak-out at Asuka kicking out of the dive, the match didn't work towards it. Carmella needed to struggle more with Asuka than she did, Asuka should've been in the control of the match more than she was.

Finally, because I wanted to end on a good note, Shinsuke vs. Styles. I've been bitching about Asuka's booking for so long so I'll try and make this quick. It took awhile for me to get into it, I don't know whether that was because I was really tired when I watched this or still a little disconnected from the Asuka finish, but much like every other match in this feud the early-goings were a little boring to me. Shinsuke's peculiar behavior mostly salvaged it, I absolutely love the jig/strut he did when he was uncovering all the announce tables. Once I got into it though it was a fairly enjoyable belt, competently told and escalated at a steady pace. I never felt like their Mania match ever got going and their other two matches had draw finishes so by simple virtue of having a proper conclusion the Last Man Standing match was destined to be their best WWE encounter but thankfully it wasn't their best simply by default. The last few minutes of the match was the perfect culmination of the feud. From Shinsuke's "come on" demonstrating the twisted personality that built this feud, to perhaps the most cathartic low-blow in wrestling history, to the Phenomenal Forearm through the announce table, a big spot to end the match, the feud, and punctuate the point of this storyline which I guess is AJ Styles will forever be better than Shinsuke Nakamura that loser.

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